At first, this just sounds like a ghoulish bid to get a freebie, but when you look at what they had to put up with, you might have a bit of sympathy:

TMZ spoke with several guests who stayed on the 4th floor when Whitney died -- the same floor Whitney had been staying on -- and they tell us ... the entire floor was on lockdown over the weekend, making their lives miserable.

We're told guests couldn't walk down a hallway without being hassled for their key cards by hotel security -- to prove they were, in fact, guests of the hotel.

Worse ... we're told law enforcement and EMS were running all over the hotel all weekend, creating an intolerable ruckus -- making it impossible to get a moment's quiet, let alone sleep.

You might think that a hotel proud of its luxury status would accept that 'dead celebrity down the corridor' is grounds to not expect people to pay for the night, surely?